Evidence Presented Matches the Defendant Mario McNeill's DNA and Cell Records

The November 2009 tragedy that started off as a missing person case for Shaniya Davis lasting six days, caught national media attention before it resulted in the rape and death of the 5-year-old Fayetteville girl.

The girl's mother Antoinette Nicole Davis, reported her missing from their mobile home on Sleepy Hollow Drive in Fayetteville and is accused of giving the child to Mario McNeill as a drug debt.

Monday morning the opening statements in U.S. vs. Mario McNeill trial began as prosecutors told the jury they would lay out a time line of compelling evidence that consisted of FBI cell analysis, date stamped video surveillance, DNA, soil and metal samples that matched up with the defendant.

Countering that, defense attorney Terry Alford told the jury that while McNeill is a street level drug dealer, there was something else going on inside the Sleepy Hollow Drive residence before McNeill had gotten there. Alford asked the jury to carefully watch the blame game and the turn of events from Davis' family that he believes will corroborate the defendant's story.

There were obvious surveillance cameras and McNeill didn't wear his hoodie, he checked in using his own driver's license. "Watch and listen to how the room (at the hotel) was left. The bedcovers were not messed up," said Alford painting a picture to the jury that McNeill was not hiding anything.

While he might have 'fudged a bit' on part of his story at the hotel about the girl being his daughter, Alford conveyed that McNeill had no reason to hide or not tell the truth. Since McNeill had drugs in the car and felt like he was suspicious to a maintenance man outside the property, he deviated from his initial plan to transport the girl to the Comfort Suites parking lot, in Sanford and went inside to check into a hotel room.

While in the hotel room, defense lawyers said that McNeill had used used cocaine and sent texts to friends while the little girl watched cartoons. He had left her in the room to go downstairs to get her breakfast before he left in the 1997 black Mitsubishi Galant, that belonged to his girlfriend, April Aubry.

First to take the stand was Brenda Davis, Shaniya's aunt and Antoinette Davis' sister who allowed them to stay at her trailer in an extra bedroom and on the couches of her Sleepy Hollow Drive residence.

Brenda Davis testified that Mario McNeill, also known as Mano, was a 'big time' drug dealer, whom she had once had 'something to do' with before she got back together with the father of her children, JeRoy Smith. The pregnant mother of two children connected the dots for the jury explaining the familial relationships and complex outer circle relationships and living arrangements at various addresses over the years.

Prior to the opening statements there was an issue of attorney-client privileged information but Superior Court Judge Jim Ammons ruled that prosecutors could tell jurors that McNeill's original lawyers tipped off Fayetteville police as to the location of Shaniya's body.

"This finding is without prejudice to the defendant and may be raised on appeal," said Judge Ammons.

On Nov. 16, 2009, search teams found the girl's body under a log, in a Kudzu patch off N.C. Highway 87 by the green porta-potties, near where deer carcasses were left to rot.

McNeill has a previous history of offenses and was on probation for an April 2008 conviction for drug possession, speeding to elude arrest and assaulting a government official. He also was convicted in 2003 for a triple shooting and in 2007 for another drug offense. McNeill is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape of a child. If convicted of first-degree murder, he could face the death penalty at the hands of the 12 member jury panel with four alternates.

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